BRUNSWICK

A new jet repair company is coming to Brunswick Landing, bringing with it the potential for hundreds of jobs and millions of dollars in economic ripple effects.

Tempus Jet Centers LLC, the maintenance and repair division of an international jet sales, charter and brokerage corporation, has begun the process of relocating to Brunswick Executive Airport from its current home in Newport News, Va.

The new site will be in operation as soon as more than $7 million in tooling and equipment — currently en route — arrives at the former naval air base, in about a week.

Barring complications and rough weather, as many as 25 employees could be on site and two project planes could be undergoing renovations in the new facility by the end of September, according to Scott Terry, Tempus Jets’ cofounder and chief executive of ficer.

Additionally, business plans call for as many as 50 workers — a few relocated from Virginia, the rest hired new locally — to be on site by the end of 2014.

Terry, who served in the U.S. Navy and was stationed in Brunswick in the early 1990s, announced Tempus’s relocation plans Wednesday during a news conference inside cavernous Hangar Six at Brunswick Executive Airport, call-signed “BXM” by the Federal Aviation Administration.

He was surrounded by state and local dignitaries, including U.S. Rep. Mike Michaud, D-2nd District; representatives from U.S. Sens. Angus King, I-Maine, and Susan Collins, R-Maine; U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-1st District; Brunswick town councilors; and members of the board of directors from Midcoast Regional Redevelopment Authority.

With numerous Beech, Gulfstream and Cirrus aircraft behind him, Terry said he expected Tempus to find a successful and profitable home in Brunswick.

“We are very happy to be in Brunswick,” he said. “We built a fabulous hangar facility in Virginia in 2009, and I never in my wildest dreams thought we’d be in a position to outgrow them. There aren’t many places in the world, let alone in the United States, that have hangar facilities like this.”

Tempus initially signed a one-year lease, with yearly renewal options, effective Sept. 15.

However, Terry said, the short-term lease details “are not indicative of the time we plan to spend here.” It’s a start-up lease, he said, intended to get the shop set up and running.

If he gets the kinds of contracts he’s hoping for — lavish, extensive aircraft modifications and custom designs from high-end private and corporate clients that are worth “tens of millions of dollars and will employ a couple of hundred people each,” he said — the already enormous hangar will require enlargement to fit planes the size of 747s.

“To do what we want will require significant expansion, which is not accounted for in the (present) lease,” Terry said.

Initial investment will be about $8.5 million, he said, followed by additional investments of up to $50 million.

“Whatever we have to invest to make it work, we’ll invest,” Terry said.

Other details call for the company to occupy 34,500 square feet of the building, with the option of expanding to more than 100,000 square feet, said Steve Levesque, executive director of Midcoast Regional Redevelopment Authority.

“They’d been looking around the country at different places, and they came up to visit,” Levesque said. Once they settled on Brunswick, negotiations between MRRA and Tempus personnel “took about three weeks.”

Actually, according to George Gervais, commissioner of the state Department of Economic and Community Development, “it was 22 days from first contact to commitment.”

“This is what can happen when government moves at the speed of business,” Gervais added.

Terry said his familiarity with the former naval air station gave Brunswick Landing somewhat of an advantage.

The Brunswick facility, called Tempus Jet Centers II LLC, is the 11th different business entity under the umbrella of Orion Air Group Holdings LLC, which is owned equally between cofounders Terry and the president and chief financial officer, Jack Gulbin.

Gulbin spent 20 years working in finance and is a former Lehman Brothers employee; when the financial trading firm died due to the economic recession and ill-advised trading practices, he started writing business plans for a living. He first met Terry when the pilot went into Lehman looking for financing to start the Tempus family.

“We ended up spending so much time together that we thought, well, why not go into business?” Gulbin recalled.

Orion Air Group has more than 125 current employees, owns and maintains 27 different aircraft and reported annual revenues of more than $125 million in 2012.

Among its other divisions are international flight operations based in Uganda, domestic flight planning services in South Carolina, an aircraft sales and service shop in Denver, Colo., and 600 acres of organic products and reforestation efforts in Suffolk, Va.

Initial staffing at Tempus’s BXM shop will be a combination of relocated personnel and new hires.

Terry added that the nearby Southern Maine Community College campus could provide training for potential future employees. If the corporation continues to expand, as it has since its inception six years ago, Tempus-BXM could employ as many as 200 workers within several years, he said.

It’s promising news for MRRA’s redevelopment efforts.

“This is one of the types of companies that we envisioned for this facility, helping to grow Maine’s aerospace business and creating new jobs,” Levesque said.

“There’s going to be a fairly significant tail on the supply chain, too,” he added. “Tempus will be looking for people and companies that do interior work, metal work, machine shops — it’s going to spin off into other areas, as well.”

MRRA expects companies at Brunswick Landing will employ nearly 400 people by the end of 2014.

“Today’s announcement is not only fantastic news for the Brunswick area, but it’s also a tribute to the exceptional work of the Midcoast Regional Redevelopment Authority, which has striven tirelessly to transform the former Brunswick Naval Air Station into a center of economic innovation,” U.S. Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King, a Brunswick independent, said in a joint statement.

“As a result, the work that Tempus Jets plans to bring to Brunswick has the potential to create more than 50 jobs and be a significant economic boon to the area.”

Levesque wrote in its latest status report that MRRA has transferred nearly 260 acres and 24 buildings at the former base to private-sector uses.

As of July 17, nearly 214 people were employed by companies at the base and the incoming class at the Southern Maine Community College campus is expected to have around 700 students.

MRRA also recently reported Wild Oats Cafe has leased new space at Brunswick Landing and will be the first eatery to open at the former base.

For a full page of photos from Wednesday’s news conference, visit the Midcoast Regional Redevelopment Authority here.